Photoclubalpha

hoping i chose the correct forum here.

I have a strange 'problem' with color management ...

I use hueyPro to calibrate my Apple Cinema display, and to monitor ambient light.

I use X-Rite passport checker to calibrate (both my NEX-3 and my alpha 350) in various lighting environments.

But I find that a certain 'tweak' (see below) which I have saved as a preset in Lightroom usually makes the colors more accurate (when I visually check the colors of the passport beside the display).

This really shouldn't be necessary! The interesting thing is that the exact same 'tweaking' helps the NEX-3 and a350 in precisely the same manner...

I'm having trouble trouble-shooting! Lots of possibilities -- i've only thrown away the possibility of a problem with X-rite, although... maybe I'm wrong ! i'm certain there isn't a problem with LIGHTROOM, since exporting the images to other apps yields no hue changes.

1) hueyPro isn't doing its job quite right???
2) Sony sensors (at least on the NEX-3 and a350 both) have a different gamut range than my display, significant enough that... errgh
3) the Cinema display or driver is gibbled?

anyway, here's what has been "improving" my color-accuracy:

* red hue -4
* purple hue +36
* magenta hue +98
* red saturation +20
* blue saturation -17
* red luminance +10
* blue luminance -13

I have a Huey Pro and I don't use it. They sent it for review, I attempted to make it do something useful but it simply doesn't, the intention was to use it for my laptop Mac but we did try the 20 inch cinema display.

I simply don't bother to calibrate anything using hardware, I have been testing this stuff for 20 years and Shirley has an MSc in the field (colour science). Basically, the difference between any two given hardware calibration kits (eyeOne, ColorMunki, Spyder Pro, whatever you like) is often greater than the difference between any two uncalibrated Mac monitors of similar type, and on the whole using the Mac's simple visual step by step calibration process (always aiming for Native Gamma and Native Whitepoint for the final profile, so you lose no dynamic range in the monitor itself) is more consistent and accurate.

When you get three or four of these calibrators to test and realise they all produce completely different profiles and adjustments, you also realise they are either all a waste of time, or all but one must be The Huey is not that one.

The default colour for the NEX is by no means bad and if you want to tweak it, save a preset like the one you have. I have a bunch of different presets for various cameras, none of them measured, all done by eye to produce what I personally want to see. Since that is all that matters in photography unless you are copying paintings, and the colours of the real world far exceed whatever we can reproduce, my answer is stop worrying about why or whether something works - if you find a solution which works for you, and can revert to facrtory defaults at any time when you need to, just go with your own tastes.

David

All those cheap consumer grade calibrators are totally useless on good modern LCDs. That's due to two separate problems - the spectra of filters/illuminants used in the panels are all very different; and the more important problem is that in order to have a wider gamut, the backlight is often modulated in colour/temperature within one frame. And those things do not integrate the measured results long enough.
So those garbage 'colorimeters' always produce the worst results on the best of LCD screens.

And then again, your monitor is supposed to produce an image correct to your eyes. So you just make it display a correct image of a Macbeth checker while having that real checker next to the screen by using whatever controls there are. No calibrator can do it better than your eye. And those cheap jokes simply defy the purpose of calibration - they always make it worse.

hello david and agorabasta,

thank you for your replies! yes, obviously the stuff doesn't work that great when our eyes tell us it isn't right... i thought maybe i just had a lemon, but i'll stop wasting my time trying to figure out what's wrong.

take care!